The markets drew perhaps more attention than usual as they started off 2018 continuing the 2017 strong returns. Of course, markets rarely continue strong rises for long periods of time. So it was not too surprising that strong returns paused in Q1 2018.Please click here for our Q1 Quarterly Market Review and click here for our Model Portfolio Summary.Pundits assigned reasons to the strong returns change like high tech companies facing privacy and cyber security issues (Facebook) and the President suggesting that tariffs would be employed to seek a more cooperative trade balance with other countries. My take is that when markets are "over bought" they can easily find reasons to go down. Traders become skittish and they find it easy to react to reasons to spark the correction.News and other pundits talked about the market as if volatility is normally absent. That's clearly wrong. Regardless of the current political and general news cycle, there will be volatility. The volatility itself will ebb and flow.Despite all the uproar - economic fundamentals remain excellent. Profits, hiring, job growth - even inflation though talked about - very slowly and tamely rising. It has been estimated quarterly profit results due out in upcoming weeks will be nearly 20% higher, reflecting the reduced tax package recently enacted. (That doesn't mean stocks will go up 20% but it is positive.)The overall result in Q1 of all the political and market "turmoil" was tame. The US Stocks as a whole were down -0.6%, international developed countries stocks were down -2%, Emerging markets up +1.4%, Global Bonds including USA down -0.5%.Breaking it down further - the only winner was Emerging Markets. In the USA, small stocks were down less versus large stocks with the SP500 at -0.8% and Russell 2000 at -0.1%.In Q1, the model portfolios were down from 1.3% to 1.6% with the more aggressive portfolios at the favorable end of that tight range. That is in part due to smaller stocks being down less, emerging markets positive returns and bonds being down due to anticipated future interest rate hikes to combat inflation.